The Divided Self

Healing the Soul of our Culture

8th July 2016

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The past few days with the EU referendum announcement have really highlighted how divided we are as a nation. Half of us choosing to stay with what we know and half of us compelled to make a leap into the unknown in the name of overthrowing the existing government or making a stand against the mirror of difference and diversity.

I wonder if this situation is an external mirror of an internal split that all of us carry in Western culture? On the one hand in our hearts we want to belong and for there to be peace and harmony and on the other hand there is the voice of our ego’s saying ‘We can do this ourselves…….let’s just separate and go back to the good old days where we had more control and a stronger sense of identity.’ But do we ever have any control? We like to believe we do but if there’s one thing the last few days has revealed is that we are ‘in this’ so deep that we are really quite lost and nobody wants to lead us through or out of this mess.

This really reminds me of the absolute complexity of our Western intellects and and the systems that have arisen from them. In a way it’s the same in our heads……..we overthink and feel threatened by anything that doesn’t align with what we feel comfortable with. On top of that we all carry collective ancestral patterns from the multiple generations before us. You believe you are ‘prejudice free’ but scratch the surface and you may find a part of you that you’ve buried so deeply you are simply not aware of it.

So putting politics to one side – what is the call of the time? For me this speaks to the need to heal the divided self because change has to occur on the inside first. Therapy is the ideal place to examine my our internal splits and to work gently and respectfully with the different voices or sub-personalities inside. There is no quick fix but there is huge life-long value in providing a space for each part of me to listen to the other and work towards integration. I watched an interview with some London voters listening to some Hull voters and they both acknowledged that they really had made a lot of assumptions about the ‘other’.

The shockwaves over this division have been apparent in the last few days and yet the toxicity of these repressed shadow aspects of our society have been there all along. We just don’t like to look at it or own it because it’s full of shame and it take courage to face that. The soul of our culture is really quite wounded and if you look back in history we are reaping what we’ve sowed.

So where is the hope in all of this? The poison may be coming to the surface and the younger generations are crying out for a society that embraces diversity and those who may be ‘different’ in some way instead of scapegoating them. We are being forced to face our individual and collective demons and so these are all signs that this whole chapter is a catalyst for change.

Maybe it is going to continue to be played out like a soap opera in the political arena but what can we do individually? We can choose to face and heal our own divided selves and do the work using whatever resources feel right for us to find our truth. It may be through therapy, meditation, bodywork, creative writing……….it doesn’t matter. Everything begins within first so it’s time to stop obsessing with externals and anchor ourselves to what really matters in life. I’m not saying we should all start a spiritual practice but maybe stop rushing around and take some time to just stop and allow yourself to connect with who you really are on the inside would be a valuable start. Some great questions to ask yourself might be ‘Am I at peace with who I am?’ ‘Am I truly comfortable with people who are different from me?’ ‘What is my head saying?’ ‘What is my heart saying?’…….’What matters most to me?’. You can get answers to these questions from your head and your heart and note the difference.

Therapy isn’t about lying on a coach and telling your story – it is the space for healing divisions and splits in the human psyche and space for the soul of our culture to be healed.

Jung nailed it when he said – 'Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.'

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